The coast by the Cornish villages of Cawsand and Kingsand, where second-home ownership is above 30%.
Photograph: acceleratorhams/Getty Images/iStockphoto

“Second home. Second home. That one’s a second home. Second home.” Alison Hall is walking along Garrett Street in the Cornish village of Cawsand reciting a litany as she passes the former fishermen’s cottages. “Second home. That’s a holiday let. Second home. These people live here all the time. Second home.”

The litany becomes a lament.

“Second home. Second home above. This one is lived in – they’ve got two young children, a rarity. These two are rented out as holiday lets … That one’s a celebrity second home.”

Garrett Street is the latest frontline to be opened in the battle against second homes. Of the 63 properties on the winding street in Cawsand, one of a handful of villages on the Rame peninsula across the water from Plymouth, only 29% are occupied all year round; 36 of them are second homes, nine are holiday lets.

Five parish councils on the peninsula have joined forces to produce a neighbourhood plan that – as in St Ives at the other end of the county – includes a provision to ensure that all newly built homes are sold as principal residences. Under the 2011 Localism Act, a local planning authority must put a neighbourhood plan in place if it wins the support of more than 50% of voters.

The move comes after the high court last week upheld the St Ives Plan following a challenge from developers. In May, 83% of St Ives residents who voted were in favour of the plan.

With councils across the country monitoring the result, the Rame peninsula is the first to move to introduce a similar measure. Consultations have been held and a referendum is expected in the new year.

“We’ve been working on this for five years,” says George Trubody, a county councillor for the peninsula and chairman of the neighbourhood plan steering group. “If the high court had upheld the challenge, we would have dropped our plan. It wouldn’t have been worth the paper it was written on.”

The rate of second-home ownership in the five parishes is among the highest in the country, with buyers drawn by the idyllic setting, the proximity to cities such as Plymouth, and comparatively low prices. While houses are expensive for locals, for buyers from London and areas of the south-east they are a bargain, with a three-bedroom house selling for around £350,000. The latest figures for home ownership in the five parishes, taken in 2009, show that in Maker-with-Rame parish, which includes the villages of Kingsand and Cawsand, second home ownership is 33.3%. St John parish, also part of the Rame peninsual group, has the second highest rate in the county, at 39.9%.

“The response to the consultation was that we don’t want more houses being built that will be bought by people from up-country so that locals can’t afford to live here,” says Trubody, sipping a coffee in the Cross Keys pub, one of four in the village. “Any new development needs to be for people to live in because otherwise we will lose our community and our schools and doctors, and the peninsula will become somewhere that just opens up in the summer.”

Cawsand beach: people born in the village say they can no longer afford to live there. Photograph: Alamy

A walk around Cawsand on a blustery November day reveals an absence of the key ingredient for a community: people.

“The village is an empty shell,” says Ross Edwards, an electrician converting a seafront house to a second home. “It’s like a ghost town. Walk down the street and you’ll only see tradesmen.”

Edwards was born in Cawsand but cannot afford to live there. “There’s nothing affordable, to rent or buy,” he says. “My father and uncle still work as fishermen but they detest it here. All their family have had to move on. It’s taken away their kids. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just a reflection of the inequality in the country.”

Occasionally, frustration at that inequality can get the better of the locals. “Sometimes people put mackerel through the letterboxes because they know there isn’t going to be anyone in the house for months,” says Edwards.

There is near unanimity in Cawsand over the threat to village life posed by second-home owners, from Brian Smith, with his range of T-shirts giving expression to his feelings about outsiders, to subpostmaster Dave Howden, who watches as visitors descend on the village without stopping at his shop.

“You see the second-home owners arrive and the Waitrose trucks come 15 minutes later,” he says“We do get to know them, though, because of their attitude, which can be slightly superior, almost condescending,” says Bowden. “They can be abrupt. Everyone here says hello to everyone else, but they don’t get involved.”

Walking around the village, it is easy to identify the second homes, from the exteriors boasting Farrow & Ball-style heritage paintwork to the interiors with their minimalist aesthetic.

“The houses are all gutted,” says Bowden. “The outside is Cornwall, the inside is London. If you don’t like a Cornish house, why buy one? I don’t understand how you can have a housing shortage and all these houses sitting here empty.”

Liz Gunn, who came from London with her husband to open the Old Bakery on Garrett Street a little less than four years ago, is one of the few to voice support for the visitors. “When we came here we had no idea who lived here or who was just visiting,” she says during a break from the day’s sourdough bread-making class, “they were all customers. I find a lot of people who have second homes here or come on holiday to be extraordinarily friendly. They’ve asked us to dinner. But sometimes you do hear the conversations and you think, oh my God, you’re from London, it’s so incongruous.”

The village is like an empty shell. Walk down the street and you'll only see tradesmen

Ross Edwards

Chris Balch, professor of planning at Plymouth University, argues that the issues around second-home ownership are an expression of the distortions of the housing market. “It’s not about xenophobia, it’s about housing being snapped up by people with 10 times the income of the locals. The government needs to address affordable housing. You can’t blame communities for doing something to rig the market. Perhaps this is some reflection of the things happening in wider society, an effort to usurp the power of the market.”

Edwina Hannaford, Cornwall council cabinet member for planning, predicted that more areas would follow the lead of St Ives. “Some of these communities are past the tipping point,” she said. “It’s not just second homes and holiday lets, now it’s investment properties. This is the worst-case scenario but the high court ruling was a triumph for localism. St Minver was waiting for the ruling and they’ve pushed the button now.”

St Minver includes the popular resorts of Polzeath and Rock, where 52% of homes are second homes, the highest proportion in Cornwall.

Back in the Cross Keys, Steve Radley sighs as he looks out of the window at Cawsand’s deserted streets. “We’re becoming a very old community,” he says. “Socially, it’s still a wonderful place to live, but I’m looking at it as someone in their seventies. We’ve ended up as a glorified theme park. When the swallows leave, the number of houses with no lights on goes up. It really gets to you.”